On 6/13/2020 12:22 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote: Anyone know where the Apple Cray went?? Do they still have it? Operational if they have it? thanks Jim

?Here i am, brain the size of a planet, and i?m controlling a robot that does tape backups?

On 6/13/2020 10:28 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: A friend that worked there when the Cray showed up only used his login to learn unix command line programming such as it was. He didn't know of anyone doing much other with it either.? I think it was bought before there was a unix type OS under the Macos. thanks Jim

Starting in 1987, future Mac product circuitry and VLSI designs were run on a Cray X-MP/48 for hardware and software simulations under Unicos Cray?s licensed version of Unix System V: Apple was the first company that Cray allowed to access their Network Systems Corporation (Minneapolis) developed high-speed channel, operating at 850Mbits per second, which Cray called its HSX channel. https://www.cbronline.com/news/apple_uses_cray_x_mp_and_unix_to_design_your… On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 8:16 PM Ethan O'Toole via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

On 6/14/20 9:36 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote: "was brought in by Apple as outside expertise to try to rescue Aquarius." Actually, Al was hired as an Apple Fellow in 1985. His first project was "Trojan" a 68000 mac on an ISA card that mixed EGA and square pixel Mac video. I was the Mac-side programmer on the project. Marketing killed it before it got from ATG to product development. The justification for the Cray was to experiment with what could be done if you had a Macintosh with the power of a Cray. It had a pretty fancy frame buffer attached to it and some pretty sophisticated anti-aliased rendering was produced. About the only video I know that escaped from Valley Green 3 was the title and end credits for "Pencil Test" which weren't produced on a Mac, they were done on the Cray (I was the person responsible for pulling all of the frame sequences together from the Mac II distributed render farm and generating the D1 tape).

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 15:25, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: It certainly would. I never heard of this before. There is a technological precedent -- well, maybe not before, but equivalent, anyway. https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php?id=qlwiki:qxl_card This is basically an enhanced (68040-based) Sinclair QL on an ISA card. It uses the DOS PC for all I/O, keeps its files in the DOS filesystem, etc., but it runs apps on its own processor in its own RAM. Given that the original QL had very slow stringy-floppy drives, fairly low-spec and quite slow graphics, this was quite a good, elegant compromise. Conceptually similar to the Acorn Springboard: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/acorn/Acorn_PC_ARM/PCW_Jan88_Springboard.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochures/Acorn_APP12… An ARM co-pro for a PC compatible, on an ISA card. But you had to write your own apps for the Springboard -- it wasn't Archimedes-compatible (and given that the Archie had very good sound, graphics and I/O for its time, it would have been horribly crippled if it was. The QXL card made a PC into a (partial) QL-compatible, able to run QL apps. A chap at ByteFest last summer had a QXL installed in an Amstrad ALT386, itself now a rare and collectible machine -- a very early 386 colour laptop, complete with a short ISA slot. So, 2 rare machines in one, and a powerful portable QL! Language issues meant I did not find out much more... http://www.bytefest.cz/ -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Sun or NeXT? - Ethan

Robert Cray always bragged that the newest Apple was designed with a Cray, whereas the newest Cray was designed with an Apple. A superlative example of the KISS principle, if it's true. On Sun, Jun 14, 2020, 10:16 PM Ethan O'Toole via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

On 06/15/2020 11:59 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: He's a musician. Jon